Word: dissenters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kundera (1984). The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia forces the surgeon Tomas, his wife Tereza and his mistress Sabina into involuntary exile. Kundera, who was himself driven from Prague by that upheaval, examines his characters' reactions to the new winds of freedom. Hailed as an apotheosis of East European dissent when it first appeared, the novel now begins to look prophetic...
Washington, Paris, London and other capitals chose to overlook Ceausescu's steel Stalinist hand at home, where he enforced a shameless cult of his own personality. He tolerated neither dissent among citizens nor a difference of opinion inside the party. He appointed his wife to the Politburo, his sons to high party and government rank and more than 30 other relatives to official positions. He basked in such honorifics as the Genius of the Carpathians and the Danube of Thought while treating the Rumanian people with extraordinary cruelty...
...people were extraordinarily civil, almost good-natured, in the way they threw out their leaders. They welcomed Alexander Dubcek, the tragic hero of the original Prague Spring, back into the public spotlight. But the man of the hour was playwright Vaclav Havel, the often imprisoned leader of dissent, who has conjured up what may be the new nemesis of world communism: "the power of the powerless." On Dec. 10 what Havel called the "velvet revolution" swept away the government. In a new Cabinet of 21, there are now eleven noncommunists. The formation of rival parties has been legalized and Civic...
Once again the task before Gorbachev is to enhance his power by co-opting the demands for radical change while at the same time persuading conservative foot draggers to join his cause. But to contain the rising tide of dissent in the Soviet Union, now bubbling up through many unofficial groups and opposing factions within the party itself, before it reaches the flood levels prevailing in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party will have to demonstrate that it deserves the support of the people without relying on the crutch of Article...
...When Gorbachev came to power he found he was presiding over a military superpower and a Third World economic power. His clients in Cuba, Viet Nam, Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua required huge subsidies. Afghanistan was costing lives as well as money. In Eastern Europe the explosive forces of dissent were building dangerously. The stagnant Soviet economy was falling further and further behind the West. Gorbachev's only option was to reform at home and retrench abroad...